Very close

My children like many other people’s children, rarely, if ever, volunteer information about how their day went - it’s like pulling teeth, but every once in a while they go all verbal on me.

“D’ya know what mum?”
“What dear?”
“Today we had science.”
“Did you indeed. And what did you learn?”
“We learneded about the male body.”
“Ah. What did you learn about the male body?”
“Males are different from females.”
“How true.”
“We learneded how males differ from females.”
“How interesting. Maybe we should talk about this after dinner.”
“D’you know the biggest difference is being?”
But he’s on a roll.
“I do, like I said, later.”
He’s unstoppable.
“Females are different from males because they don’t have a bladder.”
“!”

Droplets

Driving home in the car, we parents talk over the chorus on the back seat – Goober Guy at 50 decibels times three – about how few people wear beards in the United States, or our part of the United States, very locally and quite recently, and whether or not this might differ from our old home, at a much older time, or not. Our findings are inconclusive.

After parking on the drive my daughter tells me that on my next birthday, she will be buying me a lifetime’s supply of earplugs, minus my current fifty years.

Which is when I hear the boys:-

“What is it, a bird?”
“Not a bird, they said beard.”
“What is a beard?”
“A beard is hair on your chin.”
“What’s hair under your nose being?”
“A moustache.”
“Like Mario?”
“Yes – but you can have both, a beard and a moustache, that’s called a combo.”
And the earplugs? Not a rush job.